I wanted to see how far I could take texture and what I might compose using old books. Old books have long captivated and haunted me: hand-bound, ink-imprinted on brittle, tissue, parchment pages; Times, Serif, Lawless, Black No.7. London, New York, Paris, Berlin. Fragments of thoughts on torn pages: gateways into the mind of a far-away other.
I took these pieces of history, these artifacts with their words and I thought of opening a window or doorway into a part of myself I didn't know yet. Openings take time: these took a couple of months – reveries of mind and material. Fragments showed through as I added or removed layer upon layer to the surfaces. Like memory or a slow recognition, bits of text, shape or color emerged like trail signs in a twilight wood.
When a thing is framed by space, no matter how ordinary, it becomes singular, intriguing, unfamiliar, perhaps even beautiful, seen for itself. Removed from context, it becomes a surface upon which to project our Self. We can enter and dwell within it, bringing a kind of vividness to the garage sale of mundane doings.
These paintings are abstract, non-representational, recruiting imagination and eluding rational orientations. I invite you to pause, dwell momentarily before one that takes your attention. Perhaps you will discover some sense of recognition or magnetism: a hue, the quality of an edge, a texture, the character in a shape. Enter that.
Visit the Gallery to see New Work now on display at
Public Eat/Drink, North Adams, MA.
